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/lit/ - Literature

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6852412 No.6852412 [Reply] [Original]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/21/superheroes-cultural-catastrophe-alan-moore-comics-watchmen

>"To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence"

>"It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times."

Would you agree with that statement /lit/?

What about it the idea of stifling culture through the worship of a multi-century 'canon' of 'great' authors and thinkers, that if one puts enough time into, one can completely understand the universe that has been created from this collection? Giving some type of illusion of enlightenment just having completed the process because you'll inevitable ready so much secondary material on the literature. But it's still from another time.

>> No.6852423
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6852423

>>6852412
http://zesterdaily.com/opinion/infantilization-of-american-taste/
http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english287/Adler-Why_Read_Great_Books.htm

>> No.6852424

hey in other breaking news, harold bloom doesn't like harry potter. time for a /lit/ thread about this fascinating subject that has surely never come up before

>> No.6852441

>>6852423
>zesterdaily.com
>opinion
>discarded

>> No.6852607

The canon is already irrelevant though.

>> No.6852615

I think "admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence" is an understatement.
There is nothing there and never was any thing there but non genre fiction and poetry to interact with and transcend what is a rather negative condition.
Superheroes and video games and children's cartoons are a farce in that they promise the same things but do not provide the meal.

>> No.6852621
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6852621

>>6852441

>> No.6852627

>>6852441
okay that was the shitty one -- I wanted some article that was talking about the infantalization of American culture, but it probably wasn't necessary. The second link is the better and more pertinent link to the bait in the op

>> No.6852630

>>6852412
but aside from OP's banal question, there is something very compelling in the Job mentality. kill-your-firstborn. Late Prose-Fixated Alan Moore writes dreck; early fantasist Alan Moore writes era-defining kiddie graphics. I enjoy artists who have good reasons to hate themselves.

>> No.6854845
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6854845

>>6852630